GROWING UP

I. THE HORN BOOK.

Judith’s mother sat in her invalid chair before the grate; she looked very pretty to Judith with her hair curling back from her face, and the color of her eyes and cheeks brought out by the becoming wrapper; the firelight shone upon the mother; the fading light in the west shone upon the girl in the bay-window, the yellow head, the blue shoulders bent over the letter she was writing.

“Judith, come and tell me pictures.”

About five o’clock in the afternoon, her mother’s weariest-time, Judith often told her mother pictures.

The picture-telling began when Judith was a little girl; one afternoon she said: “Mother, I’ll tell you a picture; shut your eyes.”

It was in this very room; her mother leaned back in her wheel-chair, lifted her feet to the fender, shut her eyes, and a small seven-year-old “told” her “picture.”

Telling pictures had been the amusement of the one, and the rest of the other, many, many weary times since.

As the child grew, her pictures grew.

“Yes, mother,” said the girl in the bay window, “I’ve just finished my letter; I’ve written Aunt Affy the longest letter and told her all you said.”

“Read it to me, please?”

Standing near the window to catch the light, Judith read aloud the letter.

At times it was quaint and unchildish; then, forgetting herself, Judith had run on with her ready pen, and, with pretty phrases, told Aunt Affy the exciting events in her own life, and the quiet story of her mother’s days.

“We are coming as soon as spring comes,” she ended, “mother is coming to get strong, and I am coming to help you and learn about your village. Beautiful Bensalem. Mother says I am learning the lessons taught out of school; but how I would like to go to school with Jean Draper in your big, queer school-room.” As she turned towards her mother, the firelight and the light in her face were all the lights in the room.

The home of these two people was in two rooms; one was the kitchen, the other was bed-room, school-room, parlor. It was a month since her mother had walked through the two rooms; several times a day Judith pushed the wheel-chair through the rooms. She called these times her mother’s excursions. Last winter her mother wiped dishes, sewed a little, and once she made cake; this winter she had done little besides teach Judith. The child was such an apt scholar that her mother said she needed no teacher—she always taught herself.

Judith loved housekeeping; she loved everything she had to do, she loved everything she was growing up to do; her mother she loved best of all.

She lived all day long in a very busy world; the pictures helped fill it.

“Now, mother, shut your eyes,” she began, gleefully.

“Now, mother, shut your eyes,” said Judith gleefully.

The eyes shut themselves, the restless hands held themselves still; there would not be many more weary days, but Judith did not know that.

Judith waited a moment until she could think.

“Mother, how do pictures come?”

“Bring me that paper Don brought last night; I saw something to show